Rigging time – Part II

Standard

In this second part we are dedicated to the study of the characters and the production of the animatic. So, we focused on the study of the movements and expressions to associate to each character, on the music composition, even if temporary, because it will be later replaced by the real one, and on the scenes composition.

Working plan

In the production of the commercial it was necessary to plan carefully the various processing steps, as shown below.

The design of the concept was divided into two steps: in the first one (in late April) we assumed as a client an hypothetical airline company but then we decided to change it to Unesco, and in particular the CID (Conseil international de la danse), in order to concentrate our focus on the dances from around the world. A definitive concept has been developed in the beginning of May.

Next step was the production of the storyboard, essential for determining the arrangement of objects in space, and in general for the structure of the video, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the narrative. For this step it was required about a week of work.

Almost simultaneously to the storyboard, character and environment design were made, so that we could have a clear idea of what would have been the style and the composition of the scenes and the characters’ costumes. It was conducted a research about traditional dances of the various countries represented by the puppets: then it was possible to create the final suitable costumes for various dances in Adobe Illustrator.

During the design we considered a male and a female puppet for the study of the character, analyzing the facial expressions and movements that they perform. In this last case it was necessary a preventive study of the main sequences of movements that characterize the various folk dances.

In parallel to the composition of music, in this step still temporary, it was made an animatic for each video. Eventually we took care of the animation of the background elements of the scenes, creating a rich animatic including some effects that will be optimized later in the final product.

Study of the character

After selecting the dances that we wanted to represent in our commercial, we have identified the key steps suitable for a short presentation. We also focused on the study of facial expressions to associate to each character while dancing, considering a male (the puppet that will represent the Russia) and a female (the Spanish puppet).

Everything has been thought in order to highlight the culture of each character: so the facial features had to be those typical of the reference countries, and obviously movements had to be the typical ones of the traditional music associated with them.

To study the main movements sequences of the Spanish and the Russian puppets, we clearly used as reference different videos of real folkloristic dance performances, respectively the flamenco and the kazachok.

Animatic

At this stage we dealt with the composition of scenes and music. Every scene is divided into levels. On the various levels we placed the characters and, in the background, some elements of the tradition of the countries considered.

The alternation between countries was managed with the rotation of the levels. This allowed us to give dynamism to the animation. The dynamism in the scene will be given, in the final product, through the animation of animals or other elements present as a background behind the character.

About the music composition, we also identified the points of the track able to represent the dance in four seconds and we handled the transition between a music and one other through transitions on transients or on the attacks to give continuity and fluidity.

At this link you can see the animatic of the first spot, here the animatic of the second one.